Project Overview
Visioneer is a desktop app that helps business owners and entrepreneurs set goals and focus on their big-picture visions. Visioneer guides users with thought-provoking questions to set goals, keeps users motivated with animations and sounds, and keeps track of user progress.
Product
Desktop App
Scope of Work
Research, Product Design, UX, UI
Project Goals
Understand problem areas business owners face
Help business owners reach their goals
Learn what keeps users motivated
Challenge
Visioneer was crafted with the small (but mighty!) people in mind. I have worked with a number of small businesses and noticed a pattern. These hard workers have so much on their plate and struggle to find time to focus on achieving their big-picture goals. I wondered how I could help business owners and dreamers stay focused on their growth.
Solution
An app that allows users to create visions and goals and motivates them to reach those goals.
Process
This project started out as a scheduling tool for managers and completely transformed into a whole new product after interviewing my users. After the topic of goal setting was brought up by my first user, I was curious if all other small business owners struggled with hitting their goals like he did. This led me down a rabbit hole of conversation and research to determine ways owners and managers can visualize their business goals. I pivoted from a scheduling app to a goal-setting app that became Visioneer. This process reminded me that going into user interviews with an open mind is crucial to give your users the best possible experience and product.
Research > Develop > Revise
User Interviews
The first step of this project was finding out exactly what small business owners were struggling with in their day-to-day. I interviewed 4 business owners/entrepreneurs in different industries including a boutique owner, a restaurant owner, an event planner, and a real estate manager. My initial hypothesis was that employee scheduling and payroll were taking up too much time and an app to help with that would help free up time to focus on big-picture goals. I learned that wasn’t necessarily the case. Some questions I asked were:
What does your process look like when creating employee schedules?
What works well about the system you use for scheduling and payroll?
Tell me about a recent problem that arose when working with your business systems.
Research Findings:
Competitive Research
What goal and task apps are currently helping business owners?
After user interviews, it was clear to me that I needed to focus on creating an app that would help users set goals and stay focused on their pig-picture ideas for growth. I researched what was currently in the marketplace and compared different features. After this research, I knew I wanted my app to include the following:
A simple feature set that wouldn’t take up too much time to use
Ways to create goals
Deadline feature to keep users on track
A reward system to keep users motivated
Prompts to get users thinking about their growth visions
Meet Jack
I organized my research and crafted a user persona that embodies the business owners and entrepreneurs I talked with. This user persona is who guided me throughout the rest of my idea development and design process. His main goal is to stay focused on the growth of his business but struggles to find time and stay motivated.
How might we help Jack?
The last step in my research process was to formulate How Might We questions to answer the main problem areas of business owners. The three questions below were what jump-started my ideation and development phase to ensure a successful product.
How might we help owners focus on their growing their businesses?
Goal setting app
Prompts for them to think about their company visions
A way to add goals, and ways to reach their goals that they can check off
How might we help owners stay motivated?
Inspirational quotes from famous leaders
Animations and hits of dopamine to keep them going
Badges or a way to celebrate their achievements
How might we help owners stay on track with their goals?
Add a way to keep track of their goal progress
Add a deadline feature
Make the app small enough so it can fit on the side of their computer screen - they can glance at it throughout the day
Emails or reminders to set goals
Research > Develop > Revise
Storyboards
The first step in my development phase was putting myself in the user’s shoes to understand how this product might help them achieve their goals. I crafted two storyboards to get my brain thinking of realistic problems and goals users might face.
User/Task Flows and Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
After understanding how a desktop app could help my users and persona, I began thinking of User and Task flows so I knew what wireframes to start creating. I made the two flows below to start designing key wireframes.
Who is a Visioneer?
Before I starting tacking UI design, I asked myself an important question. Who exactly is a Visioneer and what types of feelings do I want this app to portray? I began brainstorming brand values and searching through photos to get my inspiration flowing. A Visioneer is someone who is innovative, always moving forward and wanting to tackle their goals. They see life through an optimistic lens and are consistently dreaming of ways to grow and succeed. Success to them is the small but continuous growth a human can make every day.
Visioneer Mood Board:
UI Design
After the mood board was created and I knew how I wanted the app to feel, I designed a logo, created a UI component kit, and selected colors, fonts, illustrations and icons. Once those were all set, I was able to finalize high-fidelity wireframes.
Research > Develop > Revise
Usability Testing
I tested out several flows with five users to understand how users interacted with the desktop app. This helped me make important revisions such as layout and color changes, verbiage enhancement, and scaling back on the number of features. These changes were necessary to improve user experience as well as the look, feel and simplicity of the app. See below for exact changes.
Closing Thoughts
I loved this project because many of my loved ones are small business owners and entrepreneurs and I know this product would help them. I wanted to challenge myself to make something insanely impactful for them but still keep it as simple as possible. After talking with business owners, it was clear how innovative and hard-working they are, and they deserve to reach all of their business goals. Visioneer will help them achieve their goals by:
Focusing on business growth and visions
Adding ways to reach their goals and check them off
Deadlines and a progress visual
Achievement count
Motivational animations
Visualization prompts for them to think outside the box
